Where in the books does it say the first victor of District 12 was female?

Question

This question is directly related to the other one I asked: Who was District 12's First Victor?. When I was researching about the victors I stumbled across this:

Victors
Katniss Everdeen
Peeta Mellark
Haymitch Abernathy
Unknown Female Victor (book)
_{^{- District 12 - Hunger Games Wiki}}

What surprised me about this was: "Unknown Female Victor". I have been struggling for a while now to find the book's reference to her.

To be honest, these two questions are so related I think you should update the first one with what you wrote here. This way info isn't scattered around :) — Jenayah, Oct 07 '18 at 14:35
@Jenayah - The only place I've seen her referenced is in fanfic — Valorum, Oct 07 '18 at 15:25
@Valorum mumbles something about shadowy place, fanfiction and never going there — Jenayah, Oct 07 '18 at 15:30
Aah, you see the problem is you're looking for answers in the wrong book. Her name is Mai, the previous winner from Battle Royale, which Hunger Games plagiarized practically verbatim. — Kai Qing, Mar 30 '20 at 22:01

score 14 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 14 '20 at 10:43

It doesn't, in the original trilogy.

We don't really know anything about the other District 12 victor who wasn't Haymitch, except the facts that they existed and that they died prior to the start of the first book.

It's important to be aware that the Hunger Games Wikia is extremely unreliable. Even among Wikia sites, all of which are editable by anyone and many of which are unreliable sources of canon information, the Hunger Games Wikia really stands out as being full of unsourced and/or clearly wrong nonsense. For example, see this page (also this answer), which says (without a source, naturally):

According to the Capitol, Panem has a population of 4,556,778 people. However, adding up the known populations of the Capitol and 12 districts gives it a total of only 1,905,286 people.

So ... not only is the population of Panem known down to the last decimal place (which precise moment does this figure come from, I wonder - between which births and deaths?), but it's also a figure which consists of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in the right order? What are we here, statisticians or numerologists? I really can't take this seriously.

In this case, I can see one possible source for the misinformation: the following book quote.

In the history of the Games, there have been seventy- five victors. Fifty-nine are still alive. I recognize many of their faces, either from seeing them as tributes or mentors at previous Games or from our recent viewing of the victors' tapes. Some are so old or wasted by illness, drugs, or drink that I can't place them. As one would expect, the pools of Career tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 are the largest. But every district has managed to scrape up at least one female and one male victor.

_{-- Catching Fire (emphasis mine)}

It would be possible to misinterpret this as meaning that the two District 12 victors prior to the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games must have been one female and one male. However, because this quote is from Catching Fire, in the context of the reaping, it just means that it is possible to get enough tributes for the third Quarter Quell. The "at least one female and one male" victor from District 12, in this context, refers to Katniss and Haymitch+Peeta. So it doesn't tell us that the first District 12 victor was female.

It does, however, state this in the prequel book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Either the wikia entry was edited by someone with advance knowledge, or (more likely, especially given that when there was a name it was wrong), it was a coincidence.

@TheLethalCarrot What's the betting it was someone from this site who edited it? — Rand al'Thor, Mar 30 '20 at 10:44

Alex · Answer 2 · 2018-10-08T15:03:43.190

As a supplement to Rand al'Thor's answer, you can follow the progression of the page in question to see what happened. The assertion that the other District 12 victor was female does not appear in the actual article. It only appears in the sidebar, and it was only edited in there in the last year. Below are screenshots showing the revisions which changed how the other victor was referred to:

When the sidebar was first added, the other victor was not listed at all:

^{Revision as of 20:13, January 26, 2012 by Haybernathy}

Then someone added the other victor, described as:

and another unknown victor

^{Revision as of 19:55, February 19, 2012 by 216.186.166.20}

This was later simplified to:

one unknown

^{Revision as of 23:19, February 19, 2012 by TagAlongPam}

Eventually, someone added in a (vague) parenthetical source:

one unknown (book)

^{Revision as of 18:22, June 6, 2014 by GianG}

Then the victor was given a specific (female) name when it was edited to:

Grace

^{Revision as of 17:42, July 29, 2014 by Wheelnshifter4444}

This was immediately (same exact timestamp as previous revision) changed back to:

one unknown (book)

^{Revision as of 17:42, July 29, 2014 by TheFireJay}

Then it was slightly modified to:

Unknown Victor (book; deceased)

^{Revision as of 11:09, August 11, 2017 by Bbskvc}

The next day the word "deceased" was removed:

Unknown Victor (book)

^{Revision as of 21:05, August 12, 2017 by FrostyFire}

And finally someone threw in the word "female":

Unknown Female Victor (book)

^{Revision as of 20:50, November 13, 2017 by Babycupquake33}

The user who made this edit does not seem to have provided any evidence for this change. (The parenthetical "book" was already there from the previous versions.)

And there's no reason to think the "Unknown Female" is any less nonsense than the "Grace". — Rand al'Thor, Oct 08 '18 at 14:20

Where in the books does it say the first victor of District 12 was female?

2 Answers2

It doesn't, in the original trilogy.

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